"U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined 3 percent from 2010 to 2014 even as its economy prospered and its student population grew slightly by 1 percent, boiling down to a 4 percent decrease in spending per student...Over this same 2010 to 2014 period, education spending, on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD."

Via "While the rest of the world invests more in education, the U.S. spends less" by The Hechinger Report. Find links to more stories like this—as well as job posts and ed psych announcements—here: http://edpsych.us/2fG0OJc

"Despite the persistent efforts of researchers, policy makers, and educators to improve reading performance of all children across grade levels, year after year the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) releases statistics that show a significant percentage of U.S. students performing below basic proficiency levels in reading. For example, the latest Nation’s Report Card indicates that approximately 31% of 4th graders read below a basic proficiency level (NAEP, 2015)—that is, they fail to make simple inferences and understand the overall meaning of texts. Students who experience such difficulties are likely to struggle throughout their education and employment..."

"The American Educational Research Association (AERA) strongly opposes the Rooney Amendment to the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018 (H. R. 3354), currently under consideration in the House of Representatives. The amendment would slash federal funding for the non-partisan Institute of Education Sciences (IES) by one-third, gravely undermining this important agency’s mission of advancing independent scientific evidence, statistics, and data."

#ThrowbackThursday: In her 2008 Educational Psychologist article, author Cathy Collins Block documents the legacy and continuing influence of Michael Pressley's work in the field of reading research and instruction.

"'On average, the evaluators who participated in our survey in 2012-13 estimated that 27.1 percent of all teachers in their schools were performing at a level below proficient,' the authors wrote. Those same evaluators predicted that only 23.6 percent of those low-performing teachers would receive an accordingly low rating, but in fact, only 6.6 percent received such an evaluation."

Via "Even after reforms, few ineffective teachers are identified as ineffective, study finds" by Science Daily. Find links more stories like this—and a handful of ed psych job openings—in this Friday's edition of The Division 15 Weekly Digest: http://edpsych.us/2wpEL2h

"Critics of school closures have long argued that they disproportionately impact — even target — black and Hispanic communities. The latest research gives some credence to this view. It shows that schools serving a larger share of students of color were somewhat more likely to be shut down than schools with fewer students of color and similar achievement. There was also some evidence that higher poverty schools were more likely to be closed."

(Via "Schools with more students of color are more likely to be shut down — and three other things to know about a big new study" by Chalkbeat. Find links to more stories like this—as well as current ed psych job openings—in our Weekly Digest, here: http://edpsych.us/2w4wWyN)